Client Tracking Change from MAC address to IP - increase in number of reported clients

[JF1]

HI,

We recently had a slowness in web browsing and Meraki recommended we change the client tracking from MAC address to IP address, due to 3rd party network infrastructure being present in the network, followed by an upgrade to the latest stable firmware.

We made this change and it appeared to address the issue. However a week later the problem has returned. 

I have opened a case with Meraki as I noted the number of reported clients in the dashboard has increased from roughly 300 when tracking by MAC to over 13000 when tracking by IP.

We dont have that many client endpoints on our network!

Meraki are now saying this is contributing to the problem.....

The question I have is for those who have changed client tracking from MAC to IP address have you seen a huge increase in the reported client endpoint counts?

Interestingly since making the change our CPU utilization has increased significantly as well.

We have had to revert the original change.

[mikecarter]

Any chance you are using a Meraki switch as a breakout between your ISP and MX? This will grab all IPs seen by the switch. If you need this, you should put the breakout switch in a different network.

[rhamersley]

We utilize Meraki Group policies and when we moved from MAC client addressing to IP we found that users we have applied the Meraki group policies dropped once they received a new IP address.   It was a pain adding Meraki Group Policies back to users all the time.   We ended up moving back to MAC client addressing from IP.